This is a big deal, and the world is a much better and safer place without al-Awlaki and his cohorts. Still, there is something off putting about the President ordering the execution of an American citizen without a trial.

"The search for Mr. Awlaki, the American-born cleric whose fiery sermons made him a larger-than-life figure in the shadowy world of jihad, finally ended on Friday. After several days of surveillance of Mr. Awlaki, armed drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency took off from a new, secret American base in the Arabian Peninsula, crossed into northern Yemen and unleashed a barrage of Hellfire missiles at a car carrying him and other top operatives from Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, including another American militant who had run the group’s English-language Internet magazine.

The strike was the culmination of a desperate manhunt marked not only by near misses and dead ends, but also by a wrenching legal debate in Washington about the legality — and morality — of putting an American citizen on a list of top militants marked for death. It also represented the latest killing of a senior terrorist figure in an escalated campaign by the Obama administration....American officials said that the missile strike also killed Samir Khan, an American citizen of Pakistani origin who was an editor of Inspire, Al Qaeda’s English-language online magazine. Mr. Khan, who grew up in Queens and North Carolina, proclaimed in the magazine last year that he was “proud to be a traitor to America,” and edited articles with titles like “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

United States officials said that Friday’s strike may also have killed Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a Saudi bomb maker responsible for the weapon carried by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber in the jetliner plot. He is also thought to have built the printer-cartridge bombs that, 10 months later, were intended to be put on cargo planes headed to the United States. Neither of those plots were successful."

""I mean, there are a lot of things we can do," Obama said. "The way I think about it is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track.""

"Perdue faced almost instant national criticism on Tuesday after she recommended suspending elections until the economy recovers.

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, N.C., according to the Raleigh News & Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”"

"For the only Detroit automaker that "didn't take the money" of the federal auto bailouts, Ford Motor Co. keeps paying a price for its comparative success and self-reliant turnaround....And there's no assurance the Dearborn automaker can use the commercially advantageous fact that it didn't "take the money" proffered by the Obama Treasury Department and use it in TV ads angling to sell cars and trucks. Not if the campaign takes a whack at its Detroit rivals and suggests that Ford no longer supports the Obama administration bailouts it backed in public statements and sworn congressional testimony.

As part of a campaign featuring "real people" explaining their decision to buy the Blue Oval, a guy named "Chris" says he "wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government," according the text of the ad, launched in early September.

"I was going to buy from a manufacturer that's standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That's what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta' pick yourself up and go back to work."...The ad, pulled in response to White House questions (and, presumably, carping from rival GM), threatened to rekindle the negative (if accurate) association just when the president wants credit for their positive results (GM and Chrysler are moving forward, making money and selling vehicles) and to distance himself from any public downside of his decision."

Either the Obama administration blew a deadline or they are intentionally forgoing an extra step to on the road to the Supreme Court for ObamaCare. This could put a decision right smack in the middle of the 2012 election.

"Obama administration chose not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a pivotal health reform case Monday, signaling that it’s going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether President Barack Obama’s health reform law is constitutional.

The move puts the Supreme Court in the difficult position of having to decide whether to take the highly politically charged case in the middle of the presidential election.

The Justice Department is expected to ask the court to overturn an August decision by a panel of three judges in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that found the law’s requirement to buy insurance is unconstitutional. The suit was brought by 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business, and several individuals."

"Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice's previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a "botched" operation where agents simply "lost track" of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons. ...All told, the gang spent more than $1.25 million for the illegal guns.

In June 2010, however, the ATF dramatically upped the ante, making the U.S. government the actual "seller" of guns.

According to documents obtained by Fox News, Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols -- two of those were purchased at the Lone Wolf gun store in Peoria, Ariz. An unusual sale, Dodson was sent to the store with a letter of approval from David Voth, an ATF group supervisor.

Dodson then sold the weapons to known illegal buyers, while fellow agents watched from their cars nearby.

This was not a "buy-bust" or a sting operation, where police sell to a buyer and then arrest them immediately afterward. In this case, agents were "ordered" to let the sale go through and follow the weapons to a stash house.

According to sources directly involved in the case, Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

According to a story posted Sunday on a website dedicated to covering Fast and Furious, Voth gave Dodson the assignment to "dirty him up," since Dodson had become the most vocal critic of the operation."

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Does this mean the NYPD has heat seeking missiles? Seems a bit beyond the realm of police work to take down a plane?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NYPD_60_MINUTES

"The chief of the New York Police Department says city police could take down a plane if necessary.

Commissioner Ray Kelly tells CBS' "60 Minutes" that after the Sept. 11 attacks, he decided the city couldn't rely on the federal government alone. He set about creating the NYPD's own counter-terrorism unit. He says the department is prepared for multiple scenarios and could even take down a plane.

Kelly didn't divulge details but said "obviously this would be in a very extreme situation.""

Its not like he has not been running the country any ways. I bet he is licking his chops waiting to get to and negotiate with Obama.

http://ft.com/cms/s/0/ea4f7162-e69c-11e0-8c5e-00144feab49a.html

" Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin will return to his post as president next year after he and president Dmitry Medvedev announced they were switching jobs.

The announcement was made on Saturday at the annual conference of United Russia, the hegemonic party that controls two-thirds of Russia’s parliament. It put to rest intrigue over Mr Putin’s next move.

The announcement confirms the long-held impression that Mr Medvedev was only ever a place holder for Mr Putin,who was constitutionally prohibited from a third term after serving as president from 2000-2008.

Mr Putin is now likely to win two consecutive 6 year terms,giving him a total of a quarter century in power from the time he took over the Kremlin in 2000. He remains Russia’s strongest political figure despite stepping aside for four years."

"Christine Lagarde has signalled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have to tap its members – including Britain – for billions of pounds of extra funding to stem the European debt crisis.

The head of the IMF has warned that its $384bn (£248bn) war chest designed as an emergency bail-out fund is inadequate to deliver the scale of the support required by troubled states.

In a document distributed to the IMF steering committee at the weekend, Ms Lagarde said: "The fund's credibility, and hence effectiveness, rests on its perceived capacity to cope with worst-casescenarios. Our lending capacity of almost $400bn looks comfortable today, but pales in comparison with the potential financing needs of vulnerable countries and crisis bystanders.""

" Herman Cain won the Presidency 5 straw poll here Saturday, delivering a blow to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s frontrunner status and a victory for a candidate who has struggled to transform his grassroots popularity into strong showings in national polls.

“Tonight’s winner is Herman Cain,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced. “It shows you something, the road to the White House come through Florida, and it pays to spend time here.”

Thursday, September 22, 2011

"The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.

Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.

But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.

Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements."

Copper, hit by concerns of a Chinese slowdown, tumbled 7 percent to a 1-year low. Gold, usually a safety play, was sold into the maelstrom as investors raised cash. The euro [EUR=X 1.3533 0.0073 (+0.54%) ], broke below 1.35, a recent bottom of its range. It was trading in the 1.346 area, an eight-month low against the dollar. The dollar index [.DXY 78.14 -0.32 (-0.41%) ] was 1.4 percent higher."

"A couple of years ago, I told you about Foldit, a computer game that harnesses the power of human putzing to help scientists unravel the mysteries of protein structure. There's a new research paper out that uses results from Foldit as a basis for a new proposed structure of a key protein in a virus that is a relative of HIV.

As important as proteins are, we know relatively little about how and why these complex chains of amino acids fold and twist the way they do and how that structure relates to function. Foldit takes advantage of the fact that, given the right rules, people can come up with possible, plausible protein structures far faster than a computer program can factor out all the possible permutations. And that's why Foldit players—citizen scientists of a sort—were so useful in this case."

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I am not sure the speech about a potential Palestine and the Palestinians and tomorrow's (and Friday's) actions would quite as forceful without Turner's (R) victory in NY in such a heavily Jewish District.

"American hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer bounded down the steps of the aircraft that took them from Iran to Oman late Wednesday, rushing into the arms of loved ones who had sought their freedom for more than two years.

The pair, released earlier in the day from an Iranian prison, arrived in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Their families and hiker Sarah Shourd -- who was arrested with them but freed last year on medical grounds -- hugged the young men. Shourd is Bauer's fiancee."

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

"Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year old from Buffalo, NY, is the latest victim of homophobic bullying on- and offline. Four months after recording the "It Gets Better" video above, Jamey committed suicide this week....But just a few months later, he documented the reality of his own life as one of ongoing pain.

“I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens,” he wrote in the final post on his Tumblog. “What do I have to do so people will listen to me?”"

"LightSquared, a wireless network backed by billionaire Democratic donor Philip Falcone, could beam broadband Internet everywhere—but some military officials fear it could interfere with critical GPS signals. Now, as The Daily Beast's Eli Lake exclusively reports, two U.S. officials allege the White House tried to influence their testimony to rush key testing, to LightSquare's benefit.

A second government official has come forward saying the White House tried to influence his testimony concerning a wireless broadband project backed by a Democratic donor that military officials fear might impair sensitive satellite navigation systems.

Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, told The Daily Beast he rejected “guidance” from the White House’s Office of Budget and Management suggesting he tell Congress that the government’s concerns about the project by the firm LightSquared could be resolved in 90 days, a timetable favorable to the company’s plans.

“They gave that to me and presumably the other witnesses,” Russo said. “There is one sentence I disagreed with, which said that I thought the testing could be resolved in 90 days. So I took it out.”"

"The former president of Afghanistan - a major figure who was leading peace talks aimed at ending the war - was killed in his home Tuesday by a suicide attacker wearing an exploding turban.

Burhanuddin Rabbani died when he hugged his assassin, who triggered the bomb, officials said.

The slaying threatened to destroy fragile hopes of ending the Afghan war with a negotiated settlement.

President Obama, who had a previously scheduled meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the Waldorf Hotel soon after the news broke vowed the "senseless act of violence" would not derail plans to end the war."

"Dr. Ivar Giaever, a former professor with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the 1973 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday, Sept. 13, from the premier physics society in disgust over its officially stated policy that "global warming is occurring."...The official position of the American Physical Society (APS) supports the theory that man's actions have inexorably led to the warming of the planet, through increased emissions of carbon dioxide.

Giaever does not agree -- and put it bluntly and succinctly in the subject line of his email, reprinted at Climate Depot, a website devoted to debunking the theory of man-made climate change.

"I resign from APS," Giaever wrote.

Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that "the evidence is incontrovertible."

"In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" he wrote in an email to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the physics society.

"The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period," his email message said."

"Now, for the first time, it has found a planet in orbit around a double star. Laurance Doyle from the SETI Institute in California says these twin stars are 200 light-years away from us in the constellation Cygnus, and each one has a slightly different hue.

"You have an orange star that's 69 percent the mass of the sun, and it is basically dancing with a 20-percent-the-mass-of-the-sun red star," he says. "And they go around each other every 41 days."

Doyle and his many collaborators looked closely at this system and watched as the stars temporarily dimmed with a predictable pattern — a sure sign that a planet was passing in front of them. Astronomers had previously seen strong hints of planets around twin stars, but this is the first direct observation, according to their report in Science."

"The episode —confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee —is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.

Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone.

According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, officials said.

“There was an attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage LightSquared in the process in order to bias his testimony,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said in an interview. “The only people who were involved in the process in preparation for the hearing included the Department of Defense, the White House, and the Office Management and Budget.”"

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Translation, the Obama administration wants you to report on your fellow citizens who disagree with him. If you think we have been down this road you are right. Do they not remember how this turned out last time?

If you’re someone who cares about seeing a campaign focused on substance between now and November 2012, I need you to become a part of one of our most important teams.

It’s called AttackWatch.com, and it launches today.

Here’s the deal: We all remember the birth certificate smear, the GOP’s barrage of lies about the Affordable Care Act, and the string of other phony attacks on President Obama that we’ve seen over the past few years.

There are a lot of folks on the other side who are chomping at the bit to distort the President’s record. It’s not a question of if the next big lie will come, just when — and what we’re prepared to do about it.

AttackWatch.com is exactly what it sounds like: a resource that allows us to nip these attacks in the bud before they show up on the airwaves and in emails — and then fight back with the truth.

By signing up, you’ll be on the front lines — you’ll hear about false claims as soon as they come up, and we’ll count on you to spread the truth to your friends and personal networks and let us know about new smears whenever you hear them.

Will you sign up now to be a part of AttackWatch.com?

Yes, I want to be on the team that fights back.

Not right now, but I’ll donate $5 to fund the 2012 campaign and support this work.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the main aim of a fence which Israel is building on its border with Egypt is now to block militants and not just smugglers and illegal migrants."Putting up the fence is first of all against terror activity, and only after that against (other) infiltrators," army radio quoted him as saying during a tour of the border.

Israel began constructing the fence late last year to stem the influx of thousands of illegal migrants through the porous border, which has also been a major drug and human trafficking route into Israel.

A statement from Netanyahu's office said work on the fence would be speeded up and was expected to be completed by next September."

"Robert Peraza didn’t need a map to help him find his son’s name yesterday at the World Trade Center memorial.

He was just walking around the giant square where the north tower used to be -- and there it was.

“I just began to walk, and I found it,” said Peraza, the subject of a viral, touching photograph that has quickly become the iconic portrait of grief on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks....Peraza’s son, Rob, 30, died after being trapped on the 104th floor of the north tower, just above where American Airlines Flight 11 tore a hole through the building.

He was a commodities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald and lived on the Upper West Side.

A crestfallen Peraza touched the bronze slate where his son’s name was etched, fell to a knee and lowered his head."

"This is not just any glue. It’s an adhesive that dissipates heat so efficiently that layer upon layer of chips can be stacked on top of each other into silicon “towers” up to 100 layers high, glued together with this special adhesive that keeps things cool. The result? Faster chips for computers, laptops, smartphones and anything else that uses microprocessors.

With IBM supplying its microprocessor and silicon expertise and 3M contributing its super-cool adhesive, the two companies aim to stack together processors, memory chips and networks into monster “skyscrapers” of silicon they say will be 1,000 times faster than today’s fastest processor.

When can we get our hands on this breakthrough tech? IBM’s media relations representative Michael Corrado tells us, “By the end of 2013 it should go into production. It’ll show up on servers first, and then a year after that consumers might see it.”"

Terrorists are a special type of parasite. I speak here not just to disparage them, which they certainly deserve, but to describe what they do and how they operate. Terrorists create nothing, they only destroy. Whats more, they can not even create the tools in which they need to destroy that which they hate. September 11, 2001 was not the first act of terrorism, and in the decade since there have been many more, but it was perhaps their high water mark.

The terrorists did not build the airplanes, they did not extract the oil from the ground, nor refine it to jet fuel. The terrorists did not construct the buildings, or even manufacture the weapons they used to hijack the plane. What terrorists do is take what other people create and use it against them. If we did not build the planes, the terrorist could not have used them. If we did not construct the skyscrapers, the terrorists could not have knocked them down. This of course does not mean we are to blame for the attacks, but to explain the limits of terrorism.

The most damage terrorists can ever hope to do is proportional to what we try to prevent happening accidentally to ourselves. One our chemical plants could have an accidental spill; the best case scenario for the terrorists is to force that spill. One of our nuclear power plants could have a melt down; the best case scenario for the terrorists is to cause that melt down. If something could not happen by accident, the terrorists are not sophisticated enough to make it happen.

This limit is important to consider. It means that terrorist can never win in any conventional sense of the term. Their successes limit their potential effectiveness. If they make us stop flying they can no longer use our planes. If they make us walk away from nuclear power or stop using oil tankers, those tools are no longer available to them. Terrorists can knock us back, but never finish the job. They can not force us to do anything that we do not want. They will never be able to occupy even a town for any prolonged period of time, let along a state or the whole country.

Terrorist know they can not win, but that that does not mean we can not lose. If we are scared into giving up our right and freedoms we lose. If we stop our forward progress for fear of what the terrorist could do with that new technology we lose. If we are scared to live our lives they way we wanted to and did on September 10, 2001 we lose.

Today, on the tenth anniversary of that fateful morning, make a vow to not lose.

While in Israeli, I had the privilege to go visit their 9/11 memorial. The massive size of it was touching in its own right. Israel was not struck on that terrible morning, the United States was. Yet here I was, well over 5,000 miles from my home state (NY) standing inside a memorial dedicated not a tragedy that took place within their own country, but one that impacted their close ally and friend.

If the measure of a true friend is how sincerely they mourn for your loss, Israel once again showed how close of an ally they are to the United States.

"In yesterday’s OOTD, I noted that the President went off script to deliver a lecture on the origins of the Republican Party, only like so many lectures delivered by Barack Obama, it consisted of misinformation. Don’t worry, though — the media is actually covering this gaffe. For instance, Tom Maguire finds Time Magazine having to correct the record on Lincoln:

He gives a good speech, but he’s loose with the facts. He called Abraham Lincoln the “founder” of the Republican Party. Nope. Lincoln was not the founder of the party; he wasn’t even the first Republican nominee (John Fremont was, in 1856). Lincoln was, of course, the first Republican to be elected president.

Great work by Time, huh? Only this piece wasn’t written this week. It was written in September 2008, and fact-checked Mike Huckabee, not Barack Obama. And guess who wrote this historical correction? Time Magazine’s Jay Carney … who now works at Barack Obama’s press secretary. They don’t talk to each other much in this White House, do they?

By the way, Time still hasn’t noted Obama’s error in the same way they did with non-candidate Huckabee in September 2008."

"The U.S. Senate, in an unusual procedure, cleared the way Thursday for the U.S. to lift its borrowing authority by $500 billion to $15.19 trillion, enough to keep the support federal government borrowing through late January or early February.

The action came under an unusual legislative procedure spelled out under the August agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. credit default. In a 52-45 vote, the Senate blocked an attempt by Republicans to slow down the process that will result in the $500 billion debt-ceiling increase.

The increase stems from a deal between Congress and the White House, finalized last month, that spells out how the borrowing limit would be increased by $500 billion. Under the process, lawmakers in both the House and Senate must vote on a resolution of disapproval against the increase in the borrowing limit. President Barack Obama would then have to veto the resolution of disapproval, and Congress would then vote to try and override that veto."

"At Ace’s site, DrewM is goofing on him for rolling out a 59-point plan that runs literally 160 pages long on the theory that no one but no one among the electorate will actually read the thing. True enough, but I don’t think Team Mitt expects any voters to read it. They expect voters to note the sheer size and detail of it and conclude, “This guy really does have a plan. He’s actually thinking about this.” Whether it’s a good plan or not, ironically, is a secondary question, but it’s been made that way by the utter failure of Obamanomics. Byron York notes that today’s WaPo poll finds fully 81 percent of the public claiming either that Obama’s economic program is having no effect on the economy or that it’s making things actively worse. Almost the entire country has given up on him on this seminal issue, in other words, which means all Romney has to do is show that he’s serious about finding a solution and he has an advantage. Fifty-nine points says, “I’m serious.”"

"Egyptian activists destroyed a wall around the Israeli embassy and set police cars on fire in Cairo on Friday after thousands demonstrated at Tahrir Square to push for a timetable for reforms and an end to military trials for civilians.

Activists who spearheaded an uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak on February 11 have been piling pressure on the ruling military council to fix a date for parliamentary and presidential elections and to get rid of senior officials who served under Mubarak....Some later marched to the opposite bank of the Nile in Giza. Demonstrators used hammers, large iron bars and police barricades to tear down the wall, erected this month by Egyptian authorities after daily protests over the killing of five Egyptian border guards in Sinai.

Protesters scaled the embassy building, removed the Israeli flag for the second time in less than a month and burned it.

Giza's police chief said that two police vehicles were set alight near the Israeli embassy building during the protests. State television said four police vehicles were set on fire."

"Last Friday, Amazon took on the U.S. Post Office and opened a real world locker box service as a delivery portal for the stuff people buy on Amazon.com.

The lockers, which come in several sizes, are located on a wall in a 7-11 convenience store in Seattle surrounding an ATM-like device that allows a customer to key in a PIN and pick up their Amazon package.

The boxes are a riff on what Amazon is already doing at big box electronic stores like Best Buy. Currently, if you designated a package be sent to a retail store, the products could only be electronics and games sold at those stores.

We don't have Amazon's confirmation, but it is quite possible that by installing these boxes in convenience stores, Amazon will allow customers to pick up anything that Amazon sells, including books or food."

Only for registered trademark holders. The rest of you will have to wait another 50 days. This will make for a handy 'back of the envelope' type test on freedom from censorship if this TLD is blocked or not.

"Registered trademark and brand holders will get a chance to secure .xxx domains Wednesday, if only to fend off cybersquatters.

The ICM Registry, which doles out domains to third parties like GoDaddy and Network Solutions, is giving brands 50 days to claim their domain. For example, Coca-Cola can grab www.coca-cola.xxx. Stuart Lawley, the CEO of ICM Registry, says it should cost around $200 for brands to get their .xxx domains. Unlike other top-level domains, which charge roughly $50 a year to maintain rights to a URL, brand holders will pay a one-time fee for .xxx domains.

“The truth is, no one is going to be going to coca-cola.xxx, but some may not want their brands associated [with .xxx domains] in any way,” Lawley says.

After the 50-day period, there will be a 17-day period where domains are sold exclusively to the adult entertainment industry. Lawley says the appeal of such domains is that they will provide more traffic and offer a verification of sorts."

"What we really need, if we want nanobots that can actually self-assemble into helpful swarms, is a nano-scale motor that can be driven with a tiny amount of power — and that’s exactly what researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts have done. They have taken a single butyl methyl sulfide molecule — C5H12S, just 18 atoms in total — and turned it into an electric motor that can be discretely controlled by a stream of electrons. The molecule mounts itself on a piece of copper, via adsorption, with the sulfur atom acting as a pivot — and by applying a stream of electrons from a scanning tunneling microscope, the molecule begins to spin at up to 120 revolutions per second.

With a total diameter of just one nanometer, not only is this by far the smallest electric motor in the world (and the team has already contacted the Guinness Book of World Records for certification), but because the power source is a microscope — the directional tip of the electron microscope is an electrode in the motor — the entire process can also be visualized and confirmed in real time. Most importantly, though, the electron microscope is so accurate that single-molecule motors can be turned on and off. “People have found before that they can make motors driven by light or by chemical reactions, but the issue there is that you’re driving billions of them at a time — every single motor in your beaker,” says Charles Sykes, one of the chemists behind the discovery. “The exciting thing about [this] electrical [motor] is that we can excite and watch the motion of just one, and we can see how that thing’s behaving in real time.”"

"Nice catch by JT. I’d forgotten about this incident from Campaign ’08, when McCain apologized for Bill Cunningham’s reference to “Barack Hussein Obama” in his intro at one of Maverick’s rallies. By comparison, not only is Hoffa not sorry for what he said, the best Carney can do by way of repudiation on Obama’s behalf is to say that no one speaks for The One (except him). Will that standard also apply to the Republican nominee next year? Of course not, but don’t expect any reporter there to challenge Carney on it later when the Democrats’ smear campaign against him/her gets going — except Tapper himself, of course. In fact, the new head of the DNC, who was one of the most adamant proponents of the “new tone” after the Tucson shooting, spent an entire segment on Fox News this morning deflecting questions about Hoffa rather than denouncing him. How soon things change.

Speaking of change, my favorite part of the Hoffa story is the left’s defense that he was talking specifically about voting when he called for taking those tea-party “sons of bitches” out. That’s super, but the whole point of the “new tone” demagoguery after Tucson was that intent doesn’t matter."

It is stupid, so very very stupid. Still, I can not help but wonder what the reaction would be if it was Obama and the Dems on the receiving end of Zombie masked slaughter. Somehow I doubt 'silly' and 'stupid' would be descriptive terms used, instead 'racist', 'uncivil' and proof of some elaborate Republican / Tea Party plot to invite someone to actually try something in real life.

Monday, September 5, 2011

It is a modern version of War of the Worlds. You would think though that the great strides in communication technology we have made since then that it would be harder for a few people to dupe (intentionally or otherwise) large swaths of the population.

"In Veracruz, Mexico, widespread panic consumed the local community as terrorized parents scrambled to save their children. From what, exactly? The answer is: absolutely nothing.

The panic supposedly began when two Twitter users from the area began informing their followers via a tweet that students were being kidnapped, and children held at gunpoint while other kids were being run over in the streets, Associated Press reports. Near as we can tell, the rumors first began to spread around August 25th. The exact time and day of the recent chaos remains unclear, but we are looking into the situation further....The pair in question are, reportedly, responsible for “opening the floodgates” to a series of disastrous events that did, indeed, cause massive damage. Namely, 26 car accidents with cars left in the middle of streets while panicked parents ran to protect their children. The charges reportedly caused so much damage that emergency numbers completely collapsed from the overload of terrified calls which damaged service for real emergencies.

Whether the suspects are directly responsible for the chaos is uncertain, as one suspect, Gilberto Martinez Vera, claims that he was simply retweeting rumors that had already begun."

"All over America, police have been arresting people for taking video or making sound recordings of them, even though such arrests are pretty clearly illegal. Usually, the charges are dropped once the case becomes public, and usually that’s the end of it.

But sometimes things go farther, and in two recent cases, they’ve gone far enough to bite back at the police and prosecutors involved. We need more such biting....The U.S. Court of Appeals held that the right to record police officers in public is a “clearly established” part of the First Amendment's protections, and held the officers were thus not entitled to qualified immunity, meaning that they could be sued for their actions. The decision partially rectifies a situation in which for ordinary citizens, ignorance of the law is no excuse, but for police officers and other government officials, it’s an excuse that protects them from being sued....Of course, the efforts to intimidate citizens via prosecutions and arrests are doomed to fail in the long run. Pretty much every cellphone now is a video camera, a still camera, and an audio recorder. There are even smartphone apps specifically designed for recording police encounters and uploading them to the Web so that confiscating the phone doesn’t do any good. Tiny video cameras abound nowadays, including cameras that fit in the frames of sunglasses for added inconspicuousness. And they keep getting smaller and cheaper.

You can’t arrest everyone with a camera, especially when you don’t even know they’ve got a camera. But that’s not really the issue."

"Neither Supreme Court Justice David Prosser nor fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will face criminal charges for a June altercation that broke out as the judges were considering Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining law, a special prosecutor has determined.

But the incident still could have far-reaching effects - possibly even opening the doors of the court to the public as justices debate how to decide cases.
...
Once news of the altercation between Prosser and Bradley surfaced, the Dane County Sheriff's Department launched an investigation. The office gave its findings to Ozanne this month but made no recommendations on whether anyone should be charged.

Ozanne, a Democrat, then asked Dane County Circuit Chief Judge William Foust to name a special prosecutor because Ozanne had brought the case the two justices were arguing about when the incident occurred."

Military personnel need a valid .mil email address to activate the service. It is a nice touch from Google easing the strain of serving oversees, even if only slightly, by making it that much simpler to stay in touch with their loved ones back home.

"We understand that it’s not always easy or affordable for our troops serving overseas to call friends and family at home, so starting today we’re making it completely free for all uniformed military personnel with valid United States Military (.mil) email addresses to call the United States, right from Gmail.

There are two easy steps to enable free calling from Gmail (detailed instructions)
...
Similar to free calling within the U.S., free calling to the U.S. for service members will be available for at least the rest of 2011.

We recognize and appreciate the sacrifices U.S. troops make when they serve abroad, and we’re proud to help make it a little bit easier for them to stay connected and hear a familiar voice. "

While on the subject of Google, a quick and easy way to use Gmail/Docs/'G-calendar' offline.

"The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an Internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.

Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page."

"Border Patrol officials are investigating an incursion by Mexican federal police into the United State on Thursday morning.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said armed officers with Mexico's Secretaria de Seguridad Publica federal police were in the incursion, which took place in El Paso, near the Border Patrol's Ysleta station.

The Mexican government, Border Patrol and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are investigating the incident. U.S. authorities responded to the incident."

"Employers added no jobs in August -- an alarming setback for the economy that renewed fears of another recession and raised pressure on Washington to end the hiring standstill.

Worries flared Friday after the release of the worst jobs report since September 2010. Total payrolls were unchanged, the first time since 1945 that the government reported a net job change of zero. The unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent.

The dismal news two day before Labor Day sent stocks plunging. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 253 points, or more than 2 percent."

The Berman Post has been dark for the last few days, save a few scheduled evergreen posts, because of Hurricane Irene. I was up late Saturday (technically early Sunday morning) watching the storm come closer. I checked the forecasts and thought I could catch a few hours of shut eye before the leading edge hit. I was not asleep for more than an hour or two before I woke up to the 'crack-bang' of the power being cut to part of the neighborhood. I still had power in the room I was staying in, but apparently we lost power to half the house. My parents room had lost power, and went to go check the fuse box only to discover there was water pouring into the house downstairs. My mother came rushing down the hall to get me and my brother to help my father. Thus began a 4+ hour fight against mother nature to mitigate the damage as much as possible. In the first 15 minutes of that fight there was another 'crack-boom' of the rest of the power being cut; power we did not get back until last night (hence the lack of posting). Bundles of towels, two wet-vacs, and a sub pump later and the water was mostly gone. Getting the generator up and running was critical. We lost a few rugs, and may have to replace a carpet, but beyond that the damage was minimal. It is a funny thing in this day and age to really appreciate the dawn, but not needing to carry flashlights around makes fighting the water so much easier.

We got off easy compared to some of my other family members who measured water damage in feet instead of inches. Anyways, now that the power is back posting should get back to normal.